Army Comparison: What makes an army better? A community project with beginners in mind.

Here is an ice post to help noobies who are looking for good starting 40k info. While it is intended for beginners, I'm sure vets will have their input. Lets put our heads together and create a document that helps every one!

A recent comment on my youtube channel about IG being the "Strongest Codex" and some guys disagreeing with that statement has me thinking. So here are my thoughts! First of all, at Bolscon, the Best General was a guard player. He was a really nice guy and fun to talk to, but by his own admittance, was more of a nooby. He was playing a thrown together army designed to win tournaments. Nothing wrong with that! The point here is that a relative newcomer won Best General in an 80+ man tournament simply by playing a "Point and Shoot" army. I have seen it happen before in 4th edition with guys playing Genestealer armies. He lost the overall title to a Tyranid player who was a veteran. We will get into experience giving players the edge later on.

This discussion is about strength of lists. It is my contention that the Best General Guard list, in the hands of a Veteran 40k player, is unbeatable in standard play. Of course odd mission rules help to level the playing field, but for this discussion, we will keep to the more simple scenarios. (Though I feel that this guard list is versatile enough to excell at any scenario, odd mission or funky rules you can throw at it.)

So on with the point of this post! How do we measure an armies strength, and when is that army categorized as Broken or Overmatched?

Lets come up with some nice categories with which to measure our armies. Mobility, Fire Power, Assault Power and Survivability are 4 nice places to start.

If you look at most games, you will see the 'Base' army or unit. This is the army that truely excells at nothing, but is good at every thing. In most combat racing games, there is the Huge lumbering tank vehicle that is slow as hell but takes a beating, there is the tiny zoomy car that is hard to hit, but once you do it goes down fast, then there is the easy to control, sort of fast middle car that has no drawbacks or strengths. Its mediocrity is its strength! Think Mario in Super Mario Brothers Two. In the 40k world, this is the Space Marines. They have no real flaws, but no real focus! This is where armies vary in this is where they must be measured. So using the Marines as a base, the Eldar for example excell at mobility but surrender survivability, while the Tau excell at fire power but fail in assault.

So let us come up with a scale. I open to you guys a forum on what and how to measure. I will begin this with the four categories I started. Remember, this is for newcomers, so lets keep it video game simple. Lets rate each army based on:

Mobility: The overall speed of an armies units.
Survivability: The overall ability of an army to survive. Related to Armor Values and dirty tricks like Holo Fields.
Fire Power: Duh!
Assault: Blood Angels are obviously a stronger Assault Army then Tau. Why?
Point Cost per model: Does an armies point cost hurt or help them?

Lets dig deep here with our ratings. Blood Angels can take 9 ten man assault squads for example. Obviously, codex knowledge is a must. We are writing this with new comers in mind, so while something may be obvious to you, it is likely not obvious to a beginner, or even a vet for that matter.

Let us rate the armies on a scale from 1 to 20. 20 being the best. I suggest we start with Space Marines since they will base from which we compare every thing else.

My goal here is to create a nice working document that can be linked and referenced by beginners who are coming into the game. This will solve two things. First of all, it will help beginners who are afraid to ask questions and are intimiadated by some of these blogs that may be way over their head. But also, it will give bloggers a direction to point questions to! When some one asks "Hey Ron, I love your blog but I have no clue what the heck you are talking about since I am new... what is a better army, Space Marines or Eldar?" We can say, great question, visit SUCHANDSUCH for your answer!

So the invitation is out to all of you. Comment. Give your appraisals. If you feel marines are a 20 on Survivability, please state why. This is not a debate post. State your input and opinions and I will summarize the scores and feed back into a working document. We want to come up with a firm evaluation of Space Marines first, then we can work on the individual SM off shoot codexes. Once that is done, we can move on to Eldar and beyond. If you are an eldar master, start compiling your evidence, and when the time comes, post it up!

So, have at it! Jawaballs

Edit One: Added "Point Cost" as another category for army comparison.
Edit Two: 9/17/09 Added "Versatility" as another category to reflect the changes to each list brought on by additions of "Special Characters" etc. This measures an armies ability to change itself to meet any needs. I set the Space Marine "versatility" at 20 to begin with.